rekeeper?" asked Yegor. "He used
to sit with his feet sprawling, and blow noisily into his glass of tea.
He had a red, satisfied, sweet-covered face."

"I remember, I remember," said the mother, coming back to the table.
She sat down, and looking at Yegor with a mournful expression in her
eyes, she spoke pityingly: "Poor Sashenka! How will she ever get to
the city?"

"She will be very much worn out," Yegor agreed. "The prison has shaken
her health badly. She was stronger before. Besides, she has had a
delicate bringing up. It seems to me she has already ruined her lungs.
There is something in her face that reminds one of consumption."

"Who is she?"

"The daughter of a landlord. Her father is a rich man and a big
scoundrel, according to what she says. I suppose you know, granny,
that they want to marry?"

"Who?"

"She and Pavel. Yes, indeed! But so far they have not yet been able.
When he is free, she is in prison, and vice versa." Yegor laughed.

"I didn't know it!" the mother replied after a pause. "Pasha never
speaks about himself."

Now she felt a still greater pity for the girl, and looking at her
guest with involuntary hostility, she said:

"You ought to have seen her home."

"Impossible!" Yegor answered calmly. "I have a heap of work to do
here, and the whole day to-morrow, from early morning, I shall have to
walk and walk and walk. No easy job, considering my asthma."

"She's a fine girl!" said the mother, vaguely thinking of what Yegor
had told her. She felt hurt that the news should have come to her, not
from her son, but from a stranger, and she pressed her lips together
tightly, and lowered her eyebrows.

"Yes, a fine girl!" Yegor nodded assent. "There's a bit of the
noblewoman in her yet, but it's growing less and less all the time. You
are sorry for her, I see. What's the use? You won't find heart
enough, if you start to grieve for all of us rebels, granny dear. Life
is not made very easy for us, I admit. There, for instance, is the
case of a friend of mine who returned a short while ago from exile.
When he went through Novgorod, his wife and child awaited him in
Smolensk, and when he arrived in Smolensk, they were already in prison
in Moscow. Now it's the wife's turn to go to Siberia. To be a
revolutionary and to be married is a very inconvenient
arrangement--inconvenient for the husband, inconvenient for the wife
and in the end for the cause also! I, too, had a wif